John McCain: It ‘Wasn’t Incorrect’ to Say Rand Paul Was ‘Working for Vladimir Putin’

McCain is a bitter person. At least he has always struck me as such and he is a neoconservative with full faith in the concept of American empire. Everyone remember “Bomb, bomb, Iran”? We sure do. He is of another era and as he passes into the twilight I personally can’t say that I’ll be sad to see him go. In fact Washington will be much better without him. To say such a thing about Rand Paul was simply disgraceful.

Rand is right, McCain is a “barnacled enabler” for the pro-war crowd.

(From Reason)

In March 2017, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) successfully delayed for 11 days Senate ratification of Montenegro’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). America’s leading advocate for NATO expansion, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) responded by accusing Paul of “achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin…of trying to dismember this small country.”

“I repeat again,” McCain said then, remarkably. “The senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.”

Perhaps even more remarkably, though not very surprisingly, McCain is unapologetic about that accusation in his valedictory new memoir, The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and Other Appreciations. “Senator Paul didn’t appreciate that, and I’ll grant that it was an intemperate thing to say,” McCain writes, with co-author Mark Salter. “But it wasn’t incorrect. He might not have worked wittingly for Putin, but he was doing exactly what the Russian wanted done.”

McCain and Paul have a long history of mutual antagonism on foreign policy, including NATO expansion. Paul single-handedly blocked a 2011 unanimous consent resolution to hurry the ex-Soviet Republic of Georgia into the alliance, a McCain goal for the past decade. The Arizonan has been fond of calling his fellow Senate Foreign Relations Committee member a “wacko bird“; the Kentuckian has returned the favor with the phrase “stale and moss-covered.” (Both have periodically walked the adjectives back.)